All about Dhaka Stories
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Rabat Stories
Once again we were asked by the British Council to run a documentary workshop, this time, destination: Rabat (Morocco). The deal is to teach creative documentary skills to 16 young filmmakers in 7 days and get them to make 4x3' films for international distribution. The stakes are high as the last set of films Dhaka Stories is doing extremely well, having been premiered in Sheffield in November 2010.
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We always start with the screening of examples of docs exploring what do we mean by creative documentary, how do we prioritise emotions over information? How do we construct, dramatise those emotions keeping to the truth of the character? What do we mean by reconstruction when we are talking about metaphoric images? -
Seven Sheffield world premieres
Available worldwide:SEVEN SHORT DOCUMENTARIES by talented new directors on the theme of 'Suprise' commissioned by Scottish Documentary Institute in 2010. These films surprise and sometimes uplift us with subjects ranging from a mystery sender who posts objects to fashion designer Paul Smith, to a towering transvestite struggling for acceptance in middle England, to an exploration of 21st Century suburbia in Surprise, Arizona and the portrait of a brutalist architect who will outlive all of his buildings.
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Bangladesh Film Workshop: 18-27 March 2010
SDI has been running very successful workshops in creative documentary storytelling from Edinburgh for the last seven years, however when we were invited by the British Council and the Bangladesh Documentary Council to train 16 inexperienced filmmakers and make four films in six days – that was definitely a challenge not to be turned down!
Many of us still go on assuming that creative documentary means “sleek aesthetics attached to an interesting topic.” The type of workshops we run focus on the effective and creative structuring of a story in order to engage an audience.
We arrived in Dhaka via Dubai and after a shower we met our group (14 men and two women) as well as few local documentary filmmakers that same afternoon. We started the workshop by screening the Oscar nominated film Burma VJ. It was very moving to see our new audience glued to the film. Burma shares a border with Bangladesh.
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